Frigid geysers spewing material up through cracks in the crust of Pluto’s companion Charon and recoating parts of its surface in ice crystals could be making this distant world into the equivalent of an outer solar system ice machine.

Evidence for these ice deposits comes from high-resolution spectra obtained using the Gemini Observatory’s Adaptive Optics system, ALTAIR coupled with the near-infrared instrument NIRI. The observations, made with the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, show the fingerprints of ammonia hydrates and water crystals spread in patches across Charon, and have been described as the best evidence yet for the existence of these compounds on worlds such as Charon.

Jon-Kar Zubieta and colleagues have pinpointed a brain region central to the machinery of the placebo effect—the often controversial phenomenon in which a person’s belief in the efficacy of a treatment such as a painkilling drug influences its effect.

The researchers said their findings with human subjects offer the potential of measuring the placebo effect and even modulating it for therapeutic purposes. They also said their findings could enable measurements of brain function that “would help determine dysfunctions in cerebral mechanisms that may impair recovery across a number of conditions.”

Their studies concentrated on a brain area known as the nucleus accumbens (NAC), a region deep in the brain, known to play a role in expectation of reward.

Researchers have identified a gene-regulating protein in the brains of mice that triggers the animals' ability to cope with the "behavioral despair" caused by inescapable stress. They said their studies have yielded an animal model of resilience that they will use to explore how antidepressants work on the brain circuitry involved in such stress response.

In earlier studies, Eric Nestler and his colleagues showed that exposure to repeated stress caused an increase in a protein called ∆FosB in the brain. This protein is a "transcription factor," a regulatory protein that controls the activity of multiple target genes.

In the new experiments, they sought to explore the role of ∆FosB in regulating adaptation to stress.

Want to make the perfect bandage? Mix the adhesive properties of the Mussel and the Gecko.

Scientists report they have merged two of nature’s most elegant strategies for wet and dry adhesion to produce a synthetic material that one day could lead to more durable and longer-lasting bandages, patches, and surgical materials.

The scientists, supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health, have designed a synthetic material that starts with the dry adhesive properties of the gecko lizard and supplements it with the underwater adhesive properties of a mussel.

The hybrid material, which they call a geckel nanoadhesive, proved in initial testing to be adherent under dry and wet conditions.

New research has proved the single origin of humans theory by combining studies of global genetic variations in humans with skull measurements across the world.

The research, at the University of Cambridge and funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), represents a final blow for supporters of a multiple origins of humans theory.

Competing theories on the origins of anatomically modern humans claim that either humans originated from a single point in Africa and migrated across the world, or different populations independently evolved from homo erectus to home sapiens in different areas.

Ethanol is 'oversold' a new report says.

The future of biofuels is not in corn, says a new report released today by Food & Water Watch. The corn ethanol refinery industry, the beneficiary of new renewable fuel targets in the proposed energy legislation as well as proposed loan guarantee subsidies in the 2007 Farm Bill, will not significantly offset U.S. fossil fuel consumption without unacceptable environmental and economic consequences.

"Rural communities won't benefit from the Farm Bill becoming a fuel bill. In the long run, family farmers and the environment will be losers, while agribusiness, whose political contributions are fueling the ethanol frenzy, will become the winners,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter.